Hard-Boiled Quail Eggs with Matcha Salt

Most people eat their first hard-boiled quail egg out of curiosity. When they taste how much flavor these little quarter-ounce quail eggs have, especially when dipped in matcha (powdered green tea) salt, they go on to eat three or four more.

If you can’t find quail eggs, you can substitute chicken eggs in this recipe. One hard-boiled chicken egg, quartered, equals four quail eggs.

Hard-Boiled Quail Eggs with Matcha Salt

Preparation time: 7 minutes

Cooking time: 8 minutes

Yield: 20 eggs (serves 4 people as appetizers)

20 quail eggs

1 tablespoon vinegar

1 teaspoon sea salt

1/4 teaspoon matcha

Open the quail egg container carefully.

The little eggs break easily.

Add the vinegar to a pot of cold water.

Submerge the eggs in the vinegar and water.

Bring the water just to a boil and then reduce the heat, simmering the eggs 2 to 3 minutes.

Drain the eggs and put them in a bowl of ice water.

Allow the eggs to cool (it takes just a few minutes).

Roll a wet egg on the counter, cracking the shell all over.

Peel the eggs from the rounded end first.

Take your time!

After the eggs are peeled, rinse them off to remove any little bits of shell.

Refrigerate the eggs, covered, up to 1 day.

Stir the salt and matcha together in a small bowl.

Serve the eggs cold, stacked in a martini glass or pretty bowl, with matcha salt on the side as a dipping salt.

The speckled quail egg shells are so attractive that you may want to leave a few eggs in their shell for people to admire mixed in with the peeled eggs.

Peeling quail eggs is like peeling chicken eggs in that sometimes the shells peel off smoothly and easily and sometimes they don’t, so buy more than you need to allow for eggs that don’t cooperate and break apart while you peel them.